Post Card from a St Ives camping trip

I am sure that anyone who has been on a camping
holiday, has had some incident that made them laugh, well this is mine.

Years ago, I went on a camping trip with my
boyfriend at the time, and another couple. We
decided to go camping in St Ives in Cornwall.
We were back packing at the time, so we caught the
train. (You know it's really hard work, this back
packing business.)
The train journey was quite straight forward, even
the two buses we caught were not to bad.
Then it was when we got to St Ives, that we
started to go "Oh no." As you can imagine, we were
shattered. We made our way to the Information
Centre, to find out where the nearest campsite was.
The lady was very helpful, she said she would ring
around some sites, "but guess what?" Yes you guessed right, they were all fully booked up.
(I knew we should have booked up, before coming.)
We wanted adventure, well we were going to get it.
I said, "well it looks like we're sleeping on the
beach tonight." No one was amused. "Just one
moment." The nice lady said. "There's a campsite
I have'nt tried yet, but." (Yes I thought here it
comes, there's always a but.) "Well." she said.
"It is right at the top of St Ives, its quite a
trek, but the view is spectacular."
My boyfriend never hesitated. "We will take it,
better than sleeping on the beach." Well that was
that. (But oh my god.) Now anyone who has been to
St Ives, will know how steep the hills are.
By the time we got to the top, I felt like one of
those little old women, all bent over from the
shoulders. You should try carrying a back pack,
up a steep hill, it's not easy.
We made our way to the reception, signed in. We
went through the endless list of the do's and
don'ts of a campsite, then we went to find our
spot. We were very lucky, we had a spot overlooking
the sea. The nice lady in the information centre,
was right, it was spectacular.
So next job, put the tent up, that was easy enough.
Then food, we were all very hungry by now. On went
the usual camping food of sausage and beans,
(nice and easy.) We washed up. Now we were ready
for the most important part of the day.
(The Drinking, yes at last.) We set off at a fast
pace practically running down the hill. It was so
good to be free of those back packs.
We found some brilliant pubs in St Ives. Many
ciders later, we found a pub with live music
playing. There were two men on guitars playing the
blues. They were really good. By then everything
was good, the world was a wonderful place to be,
or at least the pub was anyway.
The only thing that was'nt good was the trek back
up the hill at the end of the evening.
After leaving the pub, we crawled back up to the
campsite, holding each other up for support.
"Hurrah, we made it." We got the torch out and
found our way back to our tents.
Anyway the four of us fell into one tent, with a
flagon of cider, to carry on making merry.
We were only in the tent about five minutes, when
I started mucking around with the torch. I just
happened to shine it on the roof of the tent, what
we saw made us shudder. There was a shadow of
something huge flying around the roof of the tent.
It was bigger than a bat and just kept hovering
around the roof. We kept goading each other to go
out and have a look, to see what it was. In the
end my friends boyfriend went out. He shouted,
"I can't see anything." I shone the torch around
again, but it was still there, flapping around the
roof.
Anyway he came back in the tent. Then he looked at
us, then smirked and said. "Wait a minute, let me
see that torch." We all looked at him.
"Do you know what it was? There was a fly trapped
on the inside of the torch, where the light was.
It was flying around inside the plastic. When I
shone the torch on the roof of the tent, it
reflected on to the roof."
We laughed till we cried nearly, probably because
we were so drunk.
I never have quite forgotton that night.